WHATBOOK..?
MARLON JAMES
Novelist and 2015 Man Booker Prize winner
…are you reading now?
MARY BEARD’S SPQR: A History Of Ancient Rome. Beard is great company, and this is a necessary addition/corrective to the field of Roman history, especially since we have a habit of constantly referring to Rome as the first golden age of civilisation. Turns out they couldn’t even figure out what to do with their own poop.
… would you take to a desert island?
TONI MORRISON’S Song Of Solomon. Possibly my favourite novel. I was so astonished by the final pages that I nearly jumped off my balcony, convinced I would fly.
…first gave you the reading bug?
LITTLE House In The Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder. I remember it being the first book with more words than pictures that I stuck with. My five-year-old self just couldn’t figure out why anybody would want a book without pictures. Ridiculous. But I persevered, despite that atrocious flaw, and realised at the end that I kind of liked it.
…left you cold?
I DON’T read books long enough to be left cold. Usually, if I have no emotional connection by page 20, I give up. However, I read Jonathan Franzen’s brilliant novel The Corrections all the way to the end and was blown away by the prose, but as I closed the book I was almost overjoyed that I would never have to read about those people ever again.
A Brief History Of Seven Killings by Marlon James is published by Oneworld at £8.99.